When all seemed dark, Dinah Indetie’s story of heartbreak and despair was spiced up by the intervention of area MP Memusi Kanchori
It is often said that God appears just in the nick of time, a belief that is underpinned by the actions and parables of Jesus. In the parable of the vineyard workers in Mathew 20:1-16, workers who had lost hope were hired at the eleventh hour and paid the same wage as those hired early in the morning. Dinah Omollo Indetie, a resident of Kajiado Central, is a living testimony of this possibility after receiving help from the area MP in educating her children when she was on the verge of losing all hope.
Indeed, Ms Indetie is all praises for Memusi Kanchori, the Kajiado Centra MP who lightened her heavy burden of educating her six children. This is despite the fact that she is not a Maasai, even though she has lived in the constituency for many years.
Born in Butere in Kakamega County, Ms Indetie dropped out of school after her Std 8 education at Shakala Primary School owing to her parents’ lack of financial ability to pay for her secondary schooling. She later travelled to Nairobi, where she stayed with her aunt as she learnt tailoring at Kariobangi Market.
She later got married in 1997 to a man from Busia County, with whom they were blessed with three boys and three girls. Her husband later asked her to find a place closer to the border since he had obtained an opportunity to work in Tanzania as a teacher, and that is how she ended up in Bisil in Kajiado County.
As fate would have it, Ms Indetie’s husband abandoned the family. On the occasions he would visit, which were few and far between, he was violent. She talked to church and village elders to speak to him, but to no avail.
“He left in August 2020 and returned on July 30, 2021. After seven days he started becoming violent.” With repeated threats to her life and the man vowing to kill her, she decided not to wait for that eventuality and reported the matter to the police. The police summoned him and asked him to leave her, but after two days she found him waiting for her outside her house. She again sought help and he ran away.
Jobless and with so many children to feed and school, life has been an uphill task for Ms Indetie. She has made good use of her tailoring skills, making Maasai shukas and women’s dresses. But the sales from this business are hardly enough for the demands of her large family. When COVID-19 struck, it only made things worse as clients and businesses everywhere suffered the resulting shocks.
Ms Indetie’s eldest daughter, Loise Achieng, has had to regularly drop out of her nursing course at the Kenya Medical Training College. She also has another daughter studying at Eldoret University and a son at the Mt Kenya University main campus in Thika.
Speaking to the Kajiado Star, Ms Indetie said there’s nothing she hadn’t tried in her quest to raise finances for her children’s fees. A loan from Equity didn’t take her far enough; moreover, she had to worry about repayment. “Eventually, I got an opportunity to speak to the local MP, Memusi. He listened to me and promised to help. He fulfilled his promise by granting bursaries to some of my children. For this, I will be forever grateful.”
